Trip to Atlanta

I went down to Atlanta today to pick up the canvas. The roll was 120" wide by 6yds, Fredrix "Dixie-123". This is a fairly heavy cotton canvas with a medium toothed surface. It is pre-primed but I plan to add an additional layer of Utrecth professional gesso before using it. This is to make sure that I have the surface well sealed. I had already ordered the painting supplies and got word today they it would arrive Friday, 31.  Since the finished painting will be shipped un-stretched in a roll I'll have to construct a temporary stretcher. I thought I had a plan for mounting the canvas which was three sheets of 1/2" plywood joined on the backside. I'm worrying about the weight and how that's going to affect attaching the canvas. I'm now thinking about making stretcher bars, with supports, from 2x4's then attach 1/4" ply to the front. This should bring down the weight a great deal and make the stretcher much easier to handle. I will probably make a decision tomorrow.

How to Eat an Elephant?

As the old joke goes you eat them one bite at a time. This post is an overview to the preparation work for the painting. I've worked on complex, larger paintings in the past and have had some embarrassing failures made all the worse for being large!Almost all were due to lack of planning and preparation. Failure being an opportunity to learn something, I've learned to take time up front and do the work that will more often insure a good start and thus, a better ending.

The drawing preparation will be creating a proportional grid that I can use to scale-up a drawing to the intended size. Drawing the scene on an 16x20 is relatively easy because you can visually take-in the entire surface at one time. Seeing the relationships are simple. Not so with a with the large surface that I'll be painting. The beauty of the grid is that I don't have to work with an 8x11 ft. surface, I can work with a much more manageable 2sq. ft at a time. Below are three charcoals that I've done. The first is the entire drawing. The other two are separate drawings of single grids.



These simple drawings, and others, will help me get the initial image on the canvas accurately.

Details of Commission

On May 21, I received the go ahead to begin a large painting commission for a new hospital. The dimensions for the painting is 96.62  X 130.25 (are you smiling?). I've never done anything this large before and I thought it would be interesting to document the process with a blog page that will serve as a "diary" for the project.

The painting above is the color study that the project will be based on. It depicts a palm hammock located at Hickory Mound between St. Marks and Perry, Florida. The challenge of this painting will be how I take a very loose, brushy, impressionistic style of painting and render it on a large scale.